Essay Rock-and-Roll Case Study – Violent Crime – Law Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Part -1 Early Rock-and-Roll: Race, Class, and Cultural Change

In the 1950s, rock-and-roll emerged as a major part of U.S. popular culture. Before then, mainstream “pop” music was aimed at white adults. Songs were written by professional composers, recorded by long-established record labels, and performed by well-known artists such as Perry Como, Eddie Fisher, Doris Day, and Patti Page. Just about every big-name performer was white. At that time, the country was rigidly segregated racially, which created differences in the cultures of white people and black people. In the subcultural world of African Americans, music had sounds and rhythms reflecting jazz, gospel singing, and rhythm and blues. These musical styles were created by African American composers and performers working with black-owned record companies broadcast on radio to an almost entirely black audience. 

Class, too, divided the musical world of the 1950s, even among whites. A second musical subculture was country and western, a musical style popular among poorer whites, especially people living in the South. Like rhythm and blues, country and western music had its own composers and performers, its own record labels, and its own radio stations. “Crossover” music was rare, meaning that very few performers or songs moved from one musical world to gain popularity in another. But this musical segregation began to break down about 1955 with the birth of rock-and-roll. Rock was a new mix of older musical patterns, blending mainstream pop with country and western and, especially, rhythm and blues. 

As rock-and-roll drew together musical traditions, it soon divided society in a new way—by age. Rock was the first music clearly linked to the emergence of a youth culture—rock was all the rage among teenagers but was little appreciated by their parents. The new rock-and-roll performers were men (and a few women) who took a rebellious stand against “adult” culture. The typical rocker looked like what parents might have called a “juvenile delinquent” and claimed to be “cool,” an idea that most parents did not even understand. The first band to make it big in rock-and-roll was Bill Haley and His Comets. Emerging from the country and western tradition, Haley’s first hits in 1954—”Shake, Rattle, and Roll” and “Rock around the Clock”— were “covers” of earlier rhythm and blues songs. 

Soon, however, young people began to lose interest in older performers such as Bill Haley in favor of younger performers sporting sideburns, turned-up collars, and black leather jackets. By 1956, the unquestioned star of rock-and-roll was a poor white southern boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, named Elvis Aron Presley. With rural roots, Elvis Presley knew country and western music, and after moving to Memphis, Tennessee, he learned black gospel and rhythm and blues. Presley became the first superstar of rock-androll not just because he had talent but also because he had great crossover power. With early hits including “Hound Dog” (a rhythm and blues song originally recorded by Big Mama Thornton) and “Blue Suede Shoes” (written by country and western star Carl Perkins), Presley broke down many of the musical walls based on race and class. 

By the end of the 1950s, popular music developed in many new directions, creating soft rock (Ricky Nelson, Pat Boone), rockabilly (Johnny Cash), and dozens of doo-wop groups, both black and white (often named for birds—the Falcons, the Penguins, the Flamingos—or cars— the Imperials, the Impalas, the Fleetwoods). In the 1960s, rock expanded further, including folk music (the Kingston Trio; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Bob Dylan), surf music (the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean), and the “British invasion” led by the Beatles. Starting on the clean-cut, pop side of rock, the Beatles soon shared the spotlight with another British band proud of its “delinquent” clothing and street fighter looks—the Rolling Stones. By now, music was a huge business, including not just the hard rock of the Beatles and Stones but softer “folk rock” performed by the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash. 

In addition, “Motown” (named after the “motor city,” Detroit, the automobile-building capital of the United States at the time) and “soul” music launched the careers of dozens of African American stars, including James Brown, Aretha Franklin, the Four Tops, the Temptations, and Diana Ross and the Supremes. On the West Coast, San Francisco developed political rock music performed by Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin. West Coast spinoff styles included “acid rock,” influenced by drug use, performed by the Doors and Jimi Hendrix. The jazz influence returned as “jazz rock” played groups such as Chicago and Blood, Sweat, and Tears. 

This brief look at the birth of rock-and-roll shows the power of race and class to shape subcultural patterns. It also shows that the production of culture—music as well as movies and music videos—became a megabusiness. Most of all, it shows us that culture does not stand still but is a living process, changing, adapting, and reinventing itself over time. 

Question: 

1. Our way of life shaped rock-and-roll. In what ways did the emergence of rock-and-roll change U.S. culture? 2. Throughout this period of musical change, most musical performers were men. What does this tell us about our way of life? Is today’s popular music still dominated by men? 3. How does Pakistani music reflect our culture? 

Part-2 

Violent Crime Is Down—but Why? 

Duane: I’m a criminal justice major, and I want to be a police officer. Crime is a huge problem in America, and police are what keep the crime rate low. Sandy: I’m a sociology major. As for the crime rate, I’m not sure it’s quite that simple. . . . During the 1980s, crime rates shot upward. Just about everyone lived in fear of violent crime, and in many large cities, the numbers killed and wounded made whole neighborhoods seem like war zones. There seemed to be no solution to the problem. Yet in the 1990s, serious crime rates began to fall, until by 2000, they were at levels not seen in more than a generation. Why? Researchers point to several reasons: 

1. A reduction in the youth population. It was noted earlier that young people (particularly males) are responsible for much violent crime. During the 1990s, the population aged fifteen to twenty four dropped by 5 percent (in part because of the legalization of abortion in 1973). 

2. Changes in policing. Much of the drop in crime (as well as the earlier rise in crime) took place in large cities. In New York City, the number of murders fell from 2,245 in 1990 to just 471 in 2009 (the lowest figure since the city began keeping reliable records in 1963). Part of the reason for the decline is that the city has adopted a policy of community policing, which means that police are concerned not just with making arrests but also with preventing crime before it happens. Officers get to know the areas they patrol and stop young men for jaywalking or other minor infractions so they can check them for concealed weapons (the word has gotten around that you can be arrested for carrying a gun). There are also more police at work in large cities. For example, Los Angeles added more than 2,000 police officers in the 1990s, which contributed to its drop in violent crime during that period. 

3. More prisoners. Between 1985 and 2010, the number of inmates in jails and prisons soared from 750,000 to more than 2.3 million. The main reason for this increase is tough laws that demand prison time for certain crimes, such as drug offenses. Mass incarceration has consequences. As one analyst put it, “When you lock up an extra million people, it’s got to have some effect on the crime rate” (Franklin Zimring, quoted in Witkin, 1998:31). 

4. A better economy. The U.S. economy boomed during the 1990s. Unemployment was down, reducing the likelihood that some people would turn to crime out of economic desperation. The logic here is simple: More jobs equal fewer crimes. Government data show crime rates have continued to fall through the middle of 2010. But we might well expect that the recent economic downturn may send crime rates back upward. 

5. The declining drug trade. Many analysts agree that the most important factor in reducing rates of violent crime was the decline of crack cocaine. Crack came on the scene about 1985, and violence spread as young people—especially in the inner cities and increasingly armed with guns—became part of a booming drug trade. By the early 1990s, however, the popularity of crack began to fall as people saw the damage it was causing to entire communities. This realization, coupled with steady economic improvement and stiffer sentences for drug offenses, helped bring about the turnaround in violent crime. The current picture looks better relative to what it was a decade or two ago. But one researcher cautions, “It looks better . . . only because the early 1990s were so bad. So let’s not fool ourselves into thinking everything is resolved. It’s not.” 

Questions: 

1. Do you support the policy of community policing? Why or why not? 2. What do you see as the pros and cons of building more prisons? 3. Which of the factors mentioned here do you think is the most important in crime control? Which is least important? Why? 

Part-3 Essay Question (10 Marks) 

1. Sociologists point to ways in which family life reflects not just individual choices but the structure of society as well. Provide two examples of how society shapes family life.